A Patch of Green : The county began taking on a cleaner hue even before the Clinton-Gore victory.

The Clinton-Gore era has begun in Washington. But has it begun in Ventura County? You bet.

The trend was clear hereabouts all through 1992. To make my point, I’ve collected a few Earthwatch columns on one general topic--transportation.

Take the subject of bikes (July, 1992). In one year, this form of zero pollution transportation has expanded so much in the county that officials had to expand bike paths from 176 miles to 213, and raised by 30% the print run of the official bike path map.

In another column, I reported that 30,000 cars and trucks in America were using compressed natural gas instead of normal gasoline--reducing the air pollution they caused by almost 90% (January, 1992). But we didn’t have a compressed natural gas filling station in the county open to the public. Well, our local utility--Southern California Gas--has just announced one. Located on Patton Court near 5th and Rose, the station will open this winter.

According to Marcia A. Secord, the utility’s manager for west Ventura County, a CNG fill-er-up will cost the equivalent of 85 cents a gallon and, she pointed out, “always 26 cents per gallon less than the price of ordinary gasoline due to policy set by the California Public Utilities Commission.”

This kind of price break is one of the reasons schools and the operators of motor pools would be interested in having their very own natural gas filling station--or at least their own on-site compressor, provided by the gas company. Example: Thousand Oaks resident Hans Girard, transportation manager for Soka University in nearby Calabasas, has ordered for his school a brand new $25,000 Dodge Ram B350 natural gas van-wagon from West Oaks Chrysler.

In a November, 1991, article I reported on a project to link Ventura and Santa Clarita along the old rail line through Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru. Well, last week the Ventura County Transportation Commission received a consultant’s report, recommending that right-of-way be purchased from Southern Pacific for $10 million for future use as municipal rail.

In a column last February I described how the Adopt--A-Highway program works to keep Ventura County roadsides free of visual and material pollution. This volunteer program, involving fraternities, service clubs, businesses and even individual families had been phenomenally successful. Last February Joel Fonseca, the Caltrans official in charge of the program, said there was a 10-year waiting list of groups willing to keep a two-mile stretch of freeway free of trash. Now, Fonseca reports, there are so many requests to participate that he’s opened a 20-year waiting list. Moreover, he’s launched an Adopt--A-Freeway-Wall program for graffiti removal. He also said municipal transit districts and Metrolink are working on “Adopt--A-Bus” and “Adopt--A-Station” plans.

The Clinton--Gore victory has also evoked a rising curve of interest from business quarters. On Jan. 28, the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. will hold an important workshop, “Regulatory Forecast 1993,” for area businesses to better understand what is in the environmental offing.

Also this month, a magazine called Earth Work dubbed 1993 “Green Career Year” and, asserting that 1993 will be a good year in which to launch one, published descriptions of the “Ten Green-Hot Jobs for the ‘90s.” I had written about the magazine’s sponsor, the Student Conservation Assn., because of its environmental programs involving Venturans. Now, according to the magazine, it seems these volunteers enjoy the prospect of being hired for lucrative jobs as corporate environmental affairs managers, educators and resource managers. This month’s issue contains 16 pages of listings. The Clinton-Gore era has begun.

FYI

* Earth Work magazine’s special issue “Green-Hot Environmental Jobs for the ‘90s”: (603) 543-1700.

* Ventura County Economic Development Assn.’s “Environmental Concerns Workshop--Regulatory Forecast 1993,” Jan. 28, 7:30 to 10 a.m., $30, Financial Plaza Hilton Oxnard; 988-1106.

* Ventura Adopt-A--Highway program: (213) 897-3871. Ventura County Transportation Commission “Bikeways Map”: 642-1591.

* Southern California Gas Co.’s natural gas vehicle program: 486-9509.